In my journey as a local guide, I’ve done a lot of contributing and mapping on my own and only had the chance to meet local guides once during Abuja’s Connect Live 2018 event. It was only then I knew a community existed with a Whatsapp group too! Since then, I’d been thinking of a way to get to interact with the Abuja local guides again because I never really had the time to attend meet-ups even on weekends.
This is because, besides my busy work week, I sing in my church’s choir and rehearse every Saturday and never really get to do any other fun thing on the weekend. So when rehearsals were cancelled this one Saturday in March, 7th March, I decided I must host the cafe crawl that I had been meaning to organise since last year.
And boom! I made a sweet e-poster and shared on our Abuja local guides group and invited friends and family to join in the fun! That way, I could get more people to sign up to be local guides.
I also made a list of ALL the cafes in Abuja I thought were worth visiting. The goal was to have participants select their top 5 and and we’d visit those. And then we can always have other editions of the cafe crawl.
We started off with the picturesque Zone Cafe, which is super pretty and a dream location for influencers and flower wall lovers. I’d say it’s not very much of a cafe but a great place for photoshoots and bridal showers.
Next we visited Grounded Cafe, which I think is by far my favourite cafe because it’s very private, cozy, and smells like good coffee. I recommend their elderberry mojito (non-alcoholic), it’s such a refreshing drink!
Afterwards, we darted off to Salamander Cafe, possibly Abuja’s oldest cafe, which was at the top of a fellow local guide’s list. Salamander has its loyalists that love to sit and get work done there and buy books too. It’s a great spot to do some reading and get lost in African literature.
Our final stop was at Strobrié by Joanne, tucked away in a recreational park in Garki. It’s beautiful and a great cafe for people that look for moments to connect with nature. They have some of the best tasting cakes and desserts in Abuja (dare I say!) and you can also buy potted house plants from them.
This is by far the most interesting thing I’ve done as a local guide because it had me stepping out of my comfort zone and organising an event. Also for the first time, I was not doing my typical mapping activities by myself! I got new people to join the local guide community and showed them how to contribute to Google Maps from the app on their phones. Many of them did not know Google Maps had so many other features!
Time went by so quickly that we got through only four of our five cafes. We were so caught up in sharing experiences and photographing the cafes that I forgot to make sure we took a group photo ? That will definitely be my first point of action for the 2nd edition of the Abuja cafe crawl!
Until our next crawl! xo